Peak Rail General Discussion

I was waiting for someone to say something along those lines!

 

I suspect you're too young to fully appreciate the sheer horror of what the airwaves were subjected to by Messrs. Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Still, at least Mr.W went on to do something useful with his cut, none of which came from my pocket!

 

Peak Rail is resuming services from June 5th, which is good news, although members and shareholders haven’t actually been informed! Pre-booked tickets travelling from Rowsley.
https://www.peakrail.co.uk/

 

Trains depart Rowsley at the really memorable departure times of 11.00, 12.42 and 14.24! Why not 12.45 and 14.30?

 

Presumably to minimise the number of those troublesome passengers? Maybe it’s a novel approach to ensuring social distancing on board?

 

Based on pre-lockdown loadings on some services, if we minimise passenger numbers they will be outnumbered by the train crew.

Previously the Rowsley departure times were related to arriving at Matlock with East Mids Trains, not sure if that’s still the case. Services are, shall we say leisurely, so friendlier Rowsley departure times should be possible by making up or losing a minute along the route.

 

Like normal the protagonists once in a while stick their heads up. As member and shareholder you should be ecstatic that Peak Rail is able to operate trains again! Your attitude towards the people who have seriously put in hard work and an immense amount of effort and dedication over the last month into reopening be it the Directors, Paid Staff or Volunteers is rather disappointing to say the least. Forget personal issues!! This is about reopening Peak Rail nothing more and nothing less... So less criticism and more positive thoughts... Okay you may not like the timetable but who are you to criticise the people actually doing their very best, working long hours to reopen the railway. Negative comments doesn’t motivate or inspire those who are actually involved in the day to day planning, operation or maintenance etc needed for reopening. Stop blaming one person when you don’t know the facts...

 

Matlock has basically an hourly service, and boarding is only at Rowsley, so I can't see why a selection of random times is required.

All I can think of is they've worked out the journey time (reduced as not stopping at Darley Dale, quicker turn round at Matlock?), then added on alighting, cleaning and boarding times, and come up with 102 minutes. Does seem odd though.

 

I believe that @Sheff and @Vulcan Works have both been involved with Peak Rail in the past, so I think that they have the experience to speak about the railway.

 

The all-too-usual song from too many heritage lines/operations when anything negative is said. Look, nobody is perfect, so there will always be issues/problems; and without feedback pointing them out, how can they be fixed? @35B put it very well, over on the Patriot thread:

Look, everyone who posts here is interested in heritage rail, and supportive of it (we don't have a lot of posters who are saying 'you all are crazy for wasting time and money on this obsolete, polluting stuff; just shut it all down'), so any negative comments need to be interpreted in that general background.

Too bad the Llangollen didn't have more people "who are actually involved in the day to day [who were willing to make] negative comments".

Noel

 

Seems to be an ongoing gripe about poor Peak Rail management communications, why there is "good" (this thread with excellent posts by "Kestraleyes") and "bad" threads.

 

Yes they have and the work they did was very appreciated at the time. I too have alot of experience about the railway... Both past present and future...

 

Haters will hate, can't please everyone... Always going to be an on going gripe as you say, mainly down to personal issues

 

Yes no body is perfect or we wouldn't be human... There are negative comments and damn right criticism. Aka can't do right for doing wrong... The ones who are busting a gut to get Peak Rail back open really don't need the negative comments. Fine you dont like the management... but before putting fingers to keyboard think about the staff and volunteers who put in so much time and effort, how would you feel if everytime you logged in and someone was criticising YOU!!!

 

I feel a Monty Python quote coming on: "What did the Romans ever do for us......"

 

I don’t think I’ve ever been labelled a protagonist before! I’m always careful to distinguish between individual effort and organisational effectiveness. As I said, it’s great news that PR is reopening. PR has a fair selection of rolling stock so it should be able to provide reasonable passenger capacity on most services.

There was a question asked about why the Rowsley departure times are at odd times, which I think is fair given that the vast majority of PR’s customers are families and casual day trippers unlikely to be familiar with railway timetabling. The leisurely line speed has been commented on by some reviewers e.g. on Trip Advisor (for balance I should also say that some reviewers are very happy!). I stand by my comments about poor Plc communication with shareholders and supporters.

I remain committed to PR’s success and I’ll happily discuss with anybody on t’other thread (Peak Rail Action Group) why I think PR ought to be in the Premier League of heritage railways and why we’re not.

 

I don't think so; many outside Peak Rail, who've probably never even met the managers there, are very unhappy with some of the things done by the 'management' there (e.g. spending a barrel of money on legal fees over suits). It's really not personal - any more than the dudgeon at WSR management is personal.

And perhaps needless to say, I suspect most here have nothing but positive feelings for the hard-working volunteers who've done so much for Peak Rail.

Noel

 

I agree with you Noel. The volunteers plug away whilst management worry about (and I'm paraphrasing) "what colour the umbrellas will be when they get to Bakewell". Its not hard to see why volunteers would be royally and publicly miffed when they get into legal kerfuffles with locomotive owners. And thats without whatever rebranded Bakewell scheme gets sung from the rooftops every 5 or so years.

 

The hyper-defensive reply to what was a perfectly sensible and reasonable point about user-hostile timetables speaks volumes about PR, I am afraid.

 

Andrew ,Rodney T and myself spent a good few hours today getting a number of jobs done, darley box has been repainted in cream(the maroon being done a few weeks back), church lane up distant arm has been swapped for the new arm and we’ve done some more paving work up at Rowsley box too and finally reburied the power cable that used to go to the old bandstand.



Warm but fun, the permanent way were also doing bits and trying not to get baked alive in the sun, the gardens and lineside have been attacking the summer growth lineside at church, Rowsley and darley too and the encroached growth is back where it needs to be, also the platform shelter at riverside has had some replanking and repainting too.

also a few nice shots of the weekends return to passenger services from Stuart Graves